Holding On For The Holidays

A chef is reflected in a mirror as he cooks food on the grill. Photo: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg

Yesterday, one of my cooks expressed her concerns about her performance to me. She’d recently been promoted to a new station, a station that required advanced skill and greater responsibility compared to the one she’d previously worked. She’d also just returned from a bout with a crippling stomach virus and her already-taxed body and mind were further stressed by the greater volume of business that comes with the holidays.

Under such duress, and in comparing herself to the her predecessor on the station — a strong cook with several years more experience — this young woman feared her recent work had been subpar and that she’d reached the peak of her abilities.

In the wet shimmer of her eyes, the faint tremor of her lip, I saw the weight of self-doubt press upon her, a sight so disheartening for me because I have known her as a willful, often stubborn, always motivated creature.

I recounted to her a story of my past, of a writing instructor I’d had over a decade ago while still an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. I asked, “Am I good?” His response? There is a difference between talented and good. He considered me the former and implied that the latter was many years to come. It was a conversation I have held at the forefront of my memory ever since, and it is a philosophy that has been invaluable to my career as a cook.

Kitchen work is brutal. Cooks remain on their feet for an entire day. We are exposed to extremes of temperature, be it the ambient 118° manning the stoves or the 38° while cleaning out the walk-in refrigerator. There are open flames, blades of all manner, machines that can shatter a hand or slice off a digit if carelessly used.

Always there is the stress of time. The time it takes to ready a station for service. The time it takes to cook a piece of fish and the time it takes to cook a piece of meat so that both are ready at the same time. The time it takes to put out four plates of food, then seven, then twelve.

There is the pressure, especially in fine-dining kitchens, of standards. We must ensure that everything produced is done to that high standard. There is the chef who imposes the standard and is often the one to bear down on those cooks failing to perform.

It is a physically and emotionally stressful career and under such myriad strains it is understandable that cooks often experience a crisis of confidence. It is reasonable to consider the worst of ourselves, to think we are not good enough, to see the promise of a cooking career unravel at the seams of the talent with which we’d entered the business.

Successful cooks recognize the difficulties, however, and push through them. Such difficulties are, for this life, normal. Successful cooks persevere, trusting that their talents will blossom with time and effort.

As I talked with my cook, it occurred to me how much of this philosophy of perseverance was entwined through my life. I recalled the times when I lay awake late into the night, feeling my mind dissolve, my body contract into an iron ball of fear and confusion. When I’ve replayed regrets with past loves. When I lost my brother. When I finally decided to change careers and become a cook. When my mother lay in the ICU, her stomach splayed open and leaking after a botched procedure.

Often the things we learn in the kitchen are bigger than the kitchen. Often such lessons become our lives and I have learned that, regardless of our hardships, despite the pain that might visit us, we must hold on. We must, because it is in those moments of holding on that we begin to know ourselves, that we redefine what we are capable of, that our individual greatness is revealed.

Chefs often joke that we are glorified babysitters. To some extent, the joke holds truth, but we should not just be passively watching. We are stewards of young cooks who struggle through elements of craft, who struggle through the living of life. It is often easy to forget in the daily stresses of kitchen work that, as chefs, our greatest product is not what goes on the plate. Our legacies do not live on through a signature dish, but in the young cooks that pass through our kitchens.

To my cooks, today’s lesson is this: It will be a hard month. I will ask you to work longer hours and extra days. You will likely catch a cold, perhaps contract the flu. You will be tired. Your body will ache. Your mind will feel splintered. You will miss the holiday parties of your friends and family. Your first kiss of the New Year will happen well past the stroke of midnight. Through all this, remain steadfast. Carry on. Believe.